Yamauchi on GT5’s Mechanical Damage, Updates, & More

Kazunori Yamauchi has been fielding questions from fans on Twitter over the past few hours. The tweets are in Japanese, but with a little help from Google and medhi_san, we can get a pretty good idea of what he’s talking about. Here’s the highlights:

Flexible camera angles and “dynamic and wide-area lighting needs” are to blame for the sometimes blocky shadows. Yamauchi admits they are a problem and wants to improve them.

Yamauchi appears to consider the possibility of removing the in-game HUD (heads-up-display features) at some point in the future.

To unlock the Red Bull X1, you’ll need to complete the “Sebastian Vettel Challenge”, which appears at Level 30.

Online “lounge” functionality and other features will be added “one by one”.

Polyphony Digital continues to work on fully supporting the Logitech G25 and G27, though Yamauchi admits he would like a “new steering device soon”…

Mechanical damage options will be implemented in a new update for GT5 coming “early December”.

As you may know, many players noticed that GT5‘s face-tracking functionality only worked in Arcade mode. According to Yamauchi, it’s not available in GT mode due to memory issues with the PS3.

In-game rewards (such as the monetary prize in GT5Prologue) for your performance in online events is something Polyphony Digital is considering, and may be implemented in a future update.

Gran Turismo 5‘s official, 2-disc sound-track will be released soon.

Yamauchi wanted to implement a “free roam” gameplay mode in GT5, where players could drive around, respecting speed limits and obeying traffic laws, and even exit the car to walk around and explore the environment on foot.

The YouTube replay upload feature had to be pulled from the final version of the game because it took a very long time to render and it consumed too much memory. Yamauchi is still considering it, however.

As always, it is refreshing and exciting to see Yamauchi’s interactions with fans via Twitter. Let’s hope the medium continues to be a valuable open line into Polyphony Digital as GT5 to evolves!